(and we forgot to remember)
I wrote a piece on the horrors of first date impressions for Meet Mindful, an online dating site to serve the mindful lifestyle. If you want to hear about how my crappy car saved a first date, go here:
If you’re single and ready to mingle, check out Meet Mindful, started by a great group of people with their hearts in the right place. 
Well, hello again, New Year. How are you here already? Clearly 2014 canceled a few months because it went by faster than what Einstein would find legal. I was hoping for a little more quality time with 2014 but here you are, 2015, staring at me with your arms crossed in expectation.
Your first day is always so intimidating; it’s seductive in its freshness yet melancholy in its retrospect. You make me paraphrase John Lennon while humming this with only minor heart palpitations:
So this is 2015 and what have you done?
Another year over, and a new one just begun.
Today is the most overt line in the sand you get. It’s an undeniable request to look at that line, to examine the sand, to see if there are any amendments you would like made.
Today also tends to make you feel like a loser. You can’t help but remember this time last year and all the stuff you said you were going to do, the long list that remains unchecked. Your palms get sweatier, the tick of the clock gets louder, and the unfinished list gets shoutier.
There is a phrase called the “normative power of the actual” which essentially says that whatever exists, seems right. It is used most often in the context of legal precedence and how that which is law generates a sense that it should be law, that it’s correct because we’re used to it.
As part of the human experience, we are all too familiar with this concept. Whatever way we are living seems right. We are creatures of routine and comfort. Our habits are carved slowly like grooves on a vinyl record. We go round and round, the grooves getting deeper, their paths more permanent.
The song your vinyl makes sounds fine to you because it’s the background music of your life. It’s soothing because you know it. It seems right because it exists. But, it’s hard to truly hear your music when you are the one making it. Maybe the grooves you carved don’t suit you anymore. Maybe you really want to play a different song. Maybe smooth jazz should be out and hip-hop should be in. Days like today help you stop and really listen.
I’ve been waiting to do a lot of things my entire life. I suffered from a common affliction I call the mañana factor: “Mañana (tomorrow) I’ll do that, it doesn’t feel right today.” For years I waited for so many things. I justified the inaction because I was “waiting” therefore it felt out of my hands. I wasn’t ready, the time wasn’t right, it seems hard, so-and-so has to do this-and-that first, blah blah blah.
What I finally realized was I was waiting for me. Just me. I was the only piece missing. I was waiting for me to show up to break free of the normative power of my actual. It finally registered that life is entirely up to me, no one else can get me the life I want, and no one else can make my grooves. That is the harsh reality of growing up. I am responsible for everything that happens or doesn’t happen to me; no one else gets credit or blame.
We all need to remember that life is happening now. Like, right NOW now. The more you delay, the deeper the grooves in your vinyl record. You only get this one record so make it play the song you want, the music you deserve, the life that is you.
So, let’s say goodbye to 2014. Let’s do it with pride and with respect. Let’s remember all the things we did last year that made us wonderful. Let’s think of all the things we want to do this year to make us even more wonderful. Let’s try to forget we probably had a very similar list last year. And, let’s really do it this time. Go Team!
Here are a few motivations that may induce helpful panic attacks:
And one final quote that seems to contradict the last quote, but actually it doesn’t at all. I’ll leave it up to you to decipher them:
Happy New Year, lovies!
A new year isn’t entirely new. It takes with it all of the years before. But you don’t have to take it all with you. Your new year is waiting for you to show up and tell it where to go.
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If you haven’t read Part I, please do so now before continuing. I’ll wait…
I left us last week when Christmas was a drunken Mardi Gras opposed by many Christians and barely resembled the holiday we celebrate today. Before Christmas became something we would recognize, we must add the third element: el Señor Claus.
Saint Nicholas was a Greek bishop from the 4th century in what is now Turkey. He gave away a substantial inheritance to help the poor and sick, and was widely revered for his generosity and piety.
Most famous was when he saved three sisters from being forced into prostitution. He secretly paid their dowry by throwing bags of gold coins into their home — one went down the chimney and another landed in a pair of stockings hanging to dry on the mantle. This is where our chimney and stockings tradition comes from. While gifts arriving via chimney was common for many pagan figures like trolls, fairies, and Norse gods; it was also part of St. Nicholas’ legacy.
During the Middle Ages, the anniversary of St. Nicholas’ death on December 6th was celebrated by giving children gifts in his honor. In the 16th century, Martin Luther, whose Protestant reform work led to the Lutherans, wanted to increase children’s interest in Jesus, so he sought to change the custom of gifts coming from St. Nicholas to gifts coming from Jesus. Then the transformation of St. Nick really started.
Over time, St. Nicholas morphed with England’s Father Christmas, a character symbolizing Christmas joy, and became known as Santa Claus (the name evolved from his Dutch nickname, Sinter Klaas). Santa Claus also took on shades of Odin, the Norse god celebrated during the yule with a long white beard and an eight-legged horse he rode through the night sky delivering gifts.
The Santa Claus celebration moved to December 25th, and the gift tradition remnant from St. Nicholas and Odin was continued to remind people of the gifts the three magi brought baby Jesus.
All the pieces were now there: Yuletide/Winter Solstice + Jesus’ birth + Santa Claus. We just had to revise.
In the 1800s, the upper class had had enough of Christmas. Many Christmas traditions were pretty crappy for wealthy people as they involved mobs of drunk men prowling the streets, breaking things, and going door to door demanding food and alcohol. Sounds like a Hallmark holiday the whole family can enjoy. “Children, gather ’round and look at the drunken throngs of dudes damaging property! A Merry Christmas to us all!” said no one ever.
A movement started to domesticate Christmas, to take it inside the home, to give it meaning, and to give it to children. In 1843, Charles Dickens played a large role in revising Christmas when he wrote A Christmas Carol and the Christmas he described was an intimate family celebration of generosity and reflection. Santa Claus fit right in with this Christmas revision and the New York elite latched on.
Santa further matured with the help of two New Yorkers:
Now we had our jolly Santa, and after a Coca-Cola ad in the 1930s where Santa wore a red suit with white trim, we had his outfit.
Although many churches were historically opposed to Christmas and the new Santa Claus, they found Santa, gift giving, the pagan traditions of the Christmas tree and caroling improved church attendance. So, they adopted them full force. According to the St. Nicholas Center, “in a strange twist of fate, the new ‘secular’ Santa Claus…helped return Christmas observance to churches.”
What I found so interesting in my research was how single individuals had such large impacts, how many minds it took to craft this holiday, and how it reflects our culture throughout history.
But in writing this story, I started to feel like Scrooge Mc(Lame)Duck. I felt like I was taking something beautiful and trying to prove it wasn’t beautiful simply because it was made of stuff found on earth and not given to us from above. This would not stand for this Christmas Lover so I went back to the essence of Christmas and found it unchanged.
Yes, we created Christmas from unrelated traditions, but that doesn’t mean it’s not powerful. The things we create reflect the things we value, and with Christmas we value family, generosity, reflection, antiquity, and the high fashion in Wham’s Last Christmas.
After my research, Christmas reminded me even more of the people that came before me, of the light that is bigger than me. The imaginations of our ancestors can be seen all over our traditions. They are still there celebrating with us, reminding us to look up.
Do we lie to our children about Christmas? Yes. Why? Because Christmas gives them magic and that magic stays with us for the rest of our lives. We’ll always remember kneeling on our beds, whispering with our siblings, scanning the dark sky for Santa. Christmas tells us there is beauty in our imaginations. It tells us it’s ok to think beyond what is logical, to go beyond ourselves, to look into the dark for the light that is waiting. That is what the yuletide and winter solstice revered. That is what St. Nicholas sought. That is Jesus’ birth. And that, to me, is Christmas.
(Sources: I spent way too much time on the History Channel website and multitudes of religious websites for this information. If you want backing, ask and ye shall receive.)
Christmas was built from the minds of our ancestors and is a beautiful reflection of our cultures changing and melding through history. It reminds us to keep imagining, keep seeking the unknowns, and never forget to look up.
Similar to Easter, Christmas causes me much confusion. It seems to be a mishmash of several unrelated traditions all jammed into one that mostly revolves around buying junk, eating chocolate, and lying to children. I’ve always wondered how Jesus, Santa Claus, and yule logs have anything to do with each other, so I did a little research. I found so much interesting information that this will be a two part series.
I started by writing a list of questions I have about Christmas, which was hilarious since it became quite clear I don’t understand this holiday AT ALL. Who is Santa Claus and why does he have so many aliases (St. Nick, Kris Kringle, Father Christmas, Sinterklaas)? What does he have to do with Jesus? Is Santa immortal? Is it wrong that there is a globally sanctified lie we tell children? When did flying reindeer and elfin sweatshops come into play? Why is Santa the only person (besides pimps) who says “ho ho ho”? What is a “yule”?????
I should disclose that I am no Scrooge. My husband laughs at the magnitude of my Christmas joy. I am listening to Christmas carols as I write this. My ringtone is “Carol of Bells” every December. I honestly think the phrase: “It’s the BEST time of the year!” with embarrassing enthusiasm. Christmas to me is magical, intimate, and feels sacred and heavy with emotion. It reminds me of the quiet found only in winter that seems ancient and aware. This time of year makes me ache for the line of humanity that made me, for the light that is bigger than me. I. Love. Christmas. A lot.
Yet our traditions make no sense to me.
From my research, I learned that my confusion was warranted. Christmas is essentially the merging of at least three separate celebrations with very different meanings:
When you look at the celebrations, they don’t make sense combined together. At first. But when you look deeper, they have the same basic root: a celebration of life and light.
Let’s begin with the yuletide. This is a pagan festival originating in Germany and Scandinavia celebrating midwinter and winter solstice. Heathens celebrated this, you guys, heathens! The yuletide honored the sun and the lengthening of days that starts on winter solstice. It was a celebration of birth and the end of darkness.
The yuletide was celebrated between November and January, centering around the winter solstice on December 21. There was lots of ale drinking, sacrificing of animals, smearing of blood on walls/people, and supernatural activity. There was also a focus on, uh how do I say this, female fertility, so…
During the yuletide, people brought evergreen trees indoors and hung evergreen boughs to remind them of the life that would grow when winter ended — the origin of our Christmas trees and wreaths.
Candles, fires, and yule logs were lit to push back the winter darkness — the origin of our Christmas lights and, obviously, yule logs. This celebration is where we get mistletoe, caroling, and eating ham.
The Norse god Odin was honored, who Margaret Baker, described as: “the old blue-hooded, cloaked, white-bearded Giftbringer of the north, who rode the midwinter sky on his eight-footed steed Sleipnir, visiting his people with gifts.” Remind you of anyone else?
The yuletide/winter solstice was hugely important across many cultures long before little baby Jesus. Grocery stores and radiant floor heating didn’t exist. Fireplaces weren’t just fun, crackle ‘n pop, winter accessories — winters were hard. The return of the sun was a significant moment and revered globally by our non-equatorial ancestors for survival reasons.
I was surprised to learn that (1) Christians didn’t always celebrate Christmas, and (2) there is no mention of December 25th anywhere in the Bible. No one knows the date of Jesus’ birth and some religious historians believe there is evidence for Him being born at other times of the year.
In the 3rd century, Pope Julius I chose December 25th as Jesus’ birthday, most likely because pagan and winter solstice festivals were already celebrated at that time. By choosing the same time, church officials made it easier for people to embrace Christmas. They also assimilated many pagan traditions into Christmas to ease the transition. For instance, they adopted the pagan tradition of evergreen trees but added a new Christian twist: they put apples in the trees to symbolize the Garden of Eden, and these apples became the ornaments we use today.
Christmas was not always as solemn, biblical, and family-oriented as it is today. For a long time it was wildly pagan; it was still the yuletide and it was more like a drunken Mardi Gras celebrated in public, not privately as families.
There were so many pagan roots in Christmas traditions that it was opposed by many Christians (and still opposed by some today). The Puritans in colonial New England banned Christmas and in 1644 the Massachusetts legislature fined anyone who celebrated Christmas 5 shillings (I tried to convert this into today’s dollars using my iPhone app but oddly it didn’t know the valuation). The “war against Christmas” has been going on since like 1644, you guys!
I’ll end the post here and save the rest for Part II where we’ll discuss when Santa came into the picture, how Coca-Cola contributed to who he is, when the pagans finally lost, and how Christmas turned into a massive assembly line of gifts and harmless, little lies for our children.
(Sources: I spent way too much time on the History Channel website and multitudes of religious websites for this information. If you want backing, ask and ye shall receive.)
Christmas is our creation. A wonderful creation of ancient traditions all mashed into one weird but beautiful celebration of life and light and the stuff bigger than us. Also heathen stuff, LOTS of heathen stuff.
Today is Thanksgiving; the day dedicated to saying “thank you” by eating so much you have to go lie down. Every year your mom makes you read the Ann Landers “Thankful” poem. You feel like a 5th grader wearing a paper Pilgrim hat (more on that later). Then, everyone is forced to go around the table and awkwardly say what they’re thankful for. You get irrationally nervous and cannot think of a single thing that’s appropriate for Aunt Maybelle to hear. But there really is a lot to be thankful for and we rarely stop to appreciate it together, so this day is significant.
This year I discovered what gratitude really means, what it means to really give thanks. I’m sure most of us, when asked if we’re grateful, would say “Sure, yeah, totally, of course.” But, I bet all the candied yams in the world that’s not really true. I can admit that I wasn’t truly grateful until this year. I didn’t know what it really meant. It took challenging myself for 30 days to consciously work on it to finally feel gratitude. What I felt was overwhelming.
I learned that being grateful is not an action, it’s a feeling. I picture it — and actually feel it — like water ripples that I send out. I imagine the ripples reaching people around me and washing over them, letting them in on the secret.
It takes practice to really feel grateful, but I can attest that once you feel it, you will know what I’m talking about. It’s the most beautiful feeling, the fullest vibration, the most spiritual experience I’ve ever had. Feeling gratitude for me is like becoming a kid again where I experience moments of pure happiness, awe, and excitement. I always wished that as an adult I could experience what my birthday felt like as a child where my face pretty much exploded with how special and rad it all was. Gratitude lets me feel that radness again.
So today, when you’re sitting around a table with friends or family or whatever you choose to do, I encourage you to pause a moment. Take stock of your life, your health, your past, your air, your water, your everything. Try to feel it, how much you have. Do this alone so your mom doesn’t ask you to share all your thankfuls with Aunt Maybelle. Put aside the Ann Landers cheesiness of giving thanks and really give thanks. There is so much to be thankful for, so give yourself that moment and really look around.
I will end today with this gem:
That’s me being a festive little prairie girl on the left. Sugar and spice and everything nice, for sure. I believe that’s my turkey chandelier hanging above us too (dope!). Special shout-out to my siblings: tssk tssk to my brother wearing a hoodie (not a feather in sight), and to my sister clearly not into pilgrim fashion at all…
Today is more than the feast, the tryptophan, or the football. There is so much to be grateful for, so share that today. Because giving thanks is something you give — to yourself, to those around you, and to the world.
When the plastic margarita cup hit the floor on purpose, we knew we had probably gone too far. My husband and I were in Cabo for a wedding when travel stress led to not enough fajitas which led to margarita brain which then led to my husband jumping in the pool with my camera. All of this led to the biggest and most beautiful fight we’ve ever had.
The specifics of the fight aren’t important because there really was no need for this fight. Neither of us were that angry about the camera faux pas, and it could have been resolved with one sentence from both of us. But neither of us said that sentence, we let it escalate and that is important. What happened the next morning is what is really important.
I got up at sunrise, my spinning head making sleep impossible, and went for a walk on the beach. I was spinning because I couldn’t understand why the fight happened at all. As a chronic self-explorer, I wondered what I did to make it escalate and I wondered what we could do to not fight like that again (for more on my self-exploratory ways in marriage, see Mirror, Mirror On the Wall).
I sat on the shore as the sun rose and took this picture. It reminded me of our fight: a crash against an unexpected obstacle.
I went back to our hotel room to talk to my husband, to hear what he thought about the whole ordeal. He was waiting for me with the same confused eyes I had. What happened last night? How did we go there? Why is the floor so sticky?
I almost started laughing, the fight was that unnecessary, but I didn’t. Every fight deserves respect and is something to learn from, not only about your partner but more importantly about yourself. Fights are like sudden eruptions of really honest communication; all the deep, dormant, masked emotions slowly build under pressure and spew out for attention. When the volcano explodes, it’s important to sift through the rubble.
For those in relationships — particularly the ultra-committed, in it for the long haul ones like marriages — you know fights come with the territory. They happen and they always will, no matter how compatible and in love you are. I think it would be weirder if you didn’t fight. I would wonder who’s holding what in and when is it going to end with a margarita crashing on the floor.
My mom, a very wise woman, taught me long ago that it is important to be good at fighting. What she meant was that it isn’t important to win fights, but it is important to fight well, to fight with respect, with an open mind. That is what my husband and I are learning to do. It’s immensely challenging because fighting well requires you to put your ego aside at the very moment your ego gets called out. Nothing gets resolved when your ego is in charge because the ego just wants to win. You have to demand that your ego backs down and the ego doesn’t like to do that. But that’s when you tell your ego who’s boss…
That morning, we walked on the beach for an hour and scrutinized last night’s Eyjafjallajökull — Iceland’s famous volcano that messed up plans for days, causing the need to reroute millions of passengers. This is exactly what happened to us — we erupted and had to reroute ourselves.
We identified what made it progress from an argument to a fight. There is a big difference in vocabulary and it matters. A “fight” typically means physical aggression and use of weaponry while “argument” means differing points and verbal disagreements. While the only thing that was physically hurt was a plastic cup, it was still a fight. It was a fight because we threw words at each other and the sole purpose of those words was to hurt the other. Those were our weapons. So we declared that morning that we want to argue, we don’t want to fight.
We established ground rules to help prevent our arguments from escalating to fights. Things like: no yelling, no cussing, no slamming of margarita cups. These are our triggers. We agreed to moments of silence and found we should do more moments of silence when arguing. You can hear a lot in a little silence. Silences are like pressing the pause button; you can rewind and see things from a different angle. Silence helps you cool your magma chamber, think about what s/he said, and determine what you really have to say.
That’s as far as we got that day in Cabo, but it was revolutionary. We still argue from time to time (’cause he’s a boy and I’m a girl) and I’m still learning how to not drop the F-bomb (’cause he’s an Aries and I’m an Aries). But since the margarita fight, each argument is calmer. They end easier, without escalation, and always give rise to eye-opening discussions. We want to prevent hotspots from forming and use what we’ve learned to not throw molten rock at each other. Because in the end, it’s our choice whether we fight or whether we argue.
Nobody likes when Eyjafjallajökull spews liquid hot mmmagma. But it happens and the key is to reroute, find calmer air, and keep the margarita in the cup.
I’m pretty sure I can communicate with animals and one night while visiting my parents, I came across two cats in a kitchen stand-off. The air felt like a gas stove had been left on; anything could have ignited it. As a result, movements were slow and movements were calculated.
The two cats were seated stiffly on the counter with tails clearly fluffier than normal, signifying the presence of an imminent threat. Low growls rolled like thunderstorms between them, as if each cat was saying “Make the first move, you pussy.” I quickly calculated that it was up to me, and me alone, to mediate this cold war. I knew because of my animal communication skills that I could fix this; it was my duty. I was like the United Nations called to action. Suit me up. Sergeant. These cats were on the brink of very serious escalation and I couldn’t let them spiral to the nuclear option. Not on my watch.
Let me describe the warring parties:
Defending her home territory and weighing in at ten incredibly flabby lbs. is Sally. She is a black calico and the runt of her litter, but now she’s nine years old and completely in love with my dad. Her nickname is Ding Dong because sometimes you wonder if anyone’s home at all. Here are photos that capture Sally:
The photo on the left is typical sweet, petite Sally while the photo in the center shows Sally’s preferred sleeping position. The photo on the right with Luigi (our more regal cat) shows Sally in the background gazing with embarrassing devotion at my dad. Here is a close-up of that shot because it’s just so ridiculous:
Oh Sally Ding Dong….
Sally enjoys meowing at the attic for hours until my parents take down the ladder for her to climb up. She also enjoys sitting by the faucet for hours waiting for fresh spring water to appear. Sally has never gone past the mailbox, often miscalculates jump distances, and has a muscle tone I describe as “sea cucumber-like”. Regardless of this, she is ruthless. Sally is a serial killer and leaves regurgitated evidence of her massacres as a reminder to all: this is Sally’s house.
The visiting invader from the Bay Area, the “de-clawed? no problem!” Tibet. She is my brother/sister-in-law’s cat and her nickname is Miss Buffet since her trips to my parents’ house inevitably involve vomit due to her inability to control her eating in the “All You Can Eat (Cat Food) Buffet”. Tibet is incapable of understanding consequences. It makes no sense how bold she is — she doesn’t have claws, yet she is utterly fearless. As a visitor, she is the territorial intruder, but she struts past Ivan, our 100-lb. German Shepherd (R.I.P. Big Boy) and Luigi, our 17-lb. cat who can only be compared to a majestic jaguar (shown irritated in the photo with Sally above). Here are photos that capture Tibet’s “whatevs” attitude:
Look how chillaxed she is. Mowin’ on a catnip “pick-me-up,” rockin’ the Santa look, and yawnin’ like you’re boring her. She embodies the self-confidence we all strive for, but it comes with a lack of social awareness where she doesn’t see she’s in danger or being rude by not following the pecking order (inadvertent shout out to The Pecking Orders!).
Back to the cold war. It was clear that both kitties were just looking to feel accepted, respected, and seen by the other… the cause of most wars, right? Sally wanted Tibet to respect her home and her status as head wife. Tibet wanted Sally to welcome her as a family member. I decided it was my job to show them this since I am way wiser. First I had to establish rapport…
Starting with Sally, I pet her small head and said nice things like she has a really great rainbow of colors and I like when she timidly touches people with her paws. To Tibet I said I admire her courage and although her meows sometimes last too long, I like that she expresses herself. Both cats relaxed, gave me their trust, and a temporary ceasefire was reached.
Now that we had a suspension of aggression, I moved the negotiations forward. I went back and forth between them, now gently telling each cat what they could do to help diffuse the situation.
“Sally, you could be a little more welcoming to Tibet. She’s our guest and yes, sometimes a little intrusive and noisy, but she’s family.”
“Tibetsy, Sally feels you don’t respect her and her home. Have a little more consideration and be more courteous to your hosts.”
The cats listened. They protested at first with sullen meows to defend their actions, but I pushed on. Soon enough, I saw Tibet steal a glance at Sally and I knew we were ready to proceed to the next phase.
I took a deep breath, sent calm waves through the kitchen, and pulled out the big guns: I pet both cats at the same time. They immediately froze as if they could feel each other through my hands. They were rigid and Siberian. I continued talking, now addressing both Sally and Tibet as if we were all in a conversation. I soothed and they slowly relaxed. The meows started again but now they were playful. The cats defrosted, their tails unfluffed, and they even made eye contact.
The final phase was risky, but I knew it would work. I poured two bowls of crunchies and set them side-by-side. Tibet and Sally didn’t even hesitate and happily ate within swatting distance of the other. The war was over! I was proud of myself, and of Sally and Tibet. I knew I had the way to find peace and was proud of my mediation. I left them so I could do research on how to join the United Nations. The world needed my skills.
An hour later, I went to the kitchen and my heart sank. There was Sally and Tibet seated in the same spots as before. Low growls, tails fluffy, back on “imminent threat” alert status. I had accomplished nothing. We did not have peace. They were still on the brink of a terrible war and there was nothing I could do.
I saw in that instant that I did them a disservice by trying to fight their war for them. I saw that this wasn’t a war at all. This was just Tibet finding her place and I couldn’t force her into a place, she had to find one on her own. She had to find it with Sally. I could tell them over and over again what they should do, but nothing would resolve this struggle until they both stood up for themselves, until they decided where they fit. Real growth happens when you fight your own battles.
The next morning I woke to find Tibet engaged in another stand-off, this time with Luigi, the black panther of all panthers. Oh Tibet, you naive daredevil you, will you ever learn? I knew that as long as I tried to save her, the answer was no. This was her conflict, not mine. Luigi was going to crush her, but that was OK. That’s what cat fights are for. I didn’t intervene this time, I left them to figure it out for themselves.
Sometimes being saved doesn’t mean you were saved at all. Being left to fight your own battles is when you learn to save yourself. That’s when who you are really shows up.
Also, cats are the rulers of the internet. All hail to your rulers.
Two weeks ago, I was doing the usual: indifferently placing large volumes of political ads into the recycling bin. As I tossed these lovely brochures, I suddenly felt sorry for them. I thought about all the people that spent time creating them; there were volunteers, meetings, arguments, expense reports. But here, at what should be the climax of the ads’ purpose, the sole reason for their creation, the targeted voter did not read them. I barely even glanced at them as I threw them into the recycling.
I walked away but I kept thinking about the ads. I wondered if I was wrong. I wondered if they had anything to say. How can I conclude they are trash if I never read them? A few hours later, when I couldn’t take the curiosity anymore, I went dumpster diving. I grabbed the ads out of the trash, saving them from futile doom. I was going to read them, damn it. All of them. From that day through Election Day.
This is how I ended up an enormous pile of garbage…
As of today, six days from Election Day, I have received 61 political ads in the mail. 61 in two weeks, which averages out to five per mail day and the vast majority of these are repeats of the same two or three messages. We still have five mail days to go. Oh what bounties will my mailman bring?!
Did I read them, you ask? Oh yes, I read them. I read all over them. I tried really hard to learn from the ads but what I learned most of all was that my initial conclusion was correct: they should be placed unread into the recycling bin. I learned that none of the messages are 100% truth. They are all just weak conclusions drawn from traits/events/statements purposely taken out of context. I also learned that although there are words, charts, and bolded phrases all over them, the ads are almost entirely empty. They pretty much say nothing at all.
The campaign strategy is clear (I’m sure there are dissertations written about its effectiveness), and the strategy is quite effective. Here it is:
State your message as often as possible. Make modest changes to the language so that it appears to be new material. Say it clearly and say it obsessively, so the reader has no choice but to memorize it.
Martha Stewart it up with shiny paper, fancy font, obscure citations, and reeeeeally stretch the statistics.
The reader will subconsciously commit the ghost of the message to memory. Once the message is memorized, it will begin to seem like truth to the reader, and then the strategy is complete.
It’s true. Once you hear something enough, once it’s engrained into your memory, it’s hard not to see it as reality. Basic human psychology, folks. They do it because it works. Still, I find going after our automatic memory response is lazy and unfair; we can’t help but absorb the messages. After all, we are only cavegirls, grooorgh!
The challenge for campaign strategists is how to capture our highly limited attention spans. It is precisely our limited attention that is the entire reason for the simplify and robo-repeat strategy. It makes perfect sense. I know I’m not the only one that indifferently places the ads into the recycling bin, so they have to somehow get my attention in the few seconds they have with me. So they use catchy language, quick summaries, and leading images to tell their story in seconds. There is no other way to reach us.
The leading images are one of my favorite parts of the ads. Here is a small sample of the alarmist languages and images used:
I particularly enjoy the unflattering photos of opponents, which are usually depictions of them mid-sentence. I mean, which one of the below photos do you think came from her opponent?
The message I get is loud and clear: that girl be cray-cray, tryin’ to steal all my money, uh uh.
In general, the ads are incredibly predictable in their storytelling and I find them to be insulting to our intelligence. I can always guess the moral of the story, which is always: “Candidate X wants to murder your mom and imprison all the kittens!” The ads also ask a lot of questions with really obvious answers. For example, I found myself thinking the following:
Sure, I like children being safe.
No, I don’t like giving all my money away.
Yes, I DO like my freedom.
No, I don’t want to ruin all hope for a decent future!
Of COURSE I don’t want ISIS/Ebola making us all die!!
Don’t you DARE question my patriotism! GOD BLESS AH-MERICA!!!!
I think it is how shamelessly full of holes the arguments in the ads are that irked me the most. They are mostly illogical conditional formulas like, if A is B and B is C, then C is an America hater! After each ad I thought, “Well, that sounds like a bunch of horsesh*t…” Not a single one felt genuine. Not one of the 61 ads gave me a better impression of who the candidate really was or what the proposition really meant. Each one left me needing to decode the statements on my own time through outside research.
The weird thing is we all know there is no truth in political ads; it is discussed publicly, but still the strategy of robo-repeat continues and we continue to fall for it. The weirder thing is this strategy only exists because we created it. Very few of us are actually involved in the political process. VERY few. How many of us actually do outside research? How many of us sit down and thoroughly read the pros and cons to propositions? Who among us actually does background research on judges or school superintendents? Go ahead, raise your hands…
The real moral of the story is that we have no one to blame for this garbage strategy but ourselves. At the end of the day, we created this reality. We created it by only giving the political process — the privilege of being able to vote — the few seconds between picking up the ads and throwing them away. I think we’ve forgotten that voting is when we get to influence, it DOES matter. It should be our most involved part, the most important part, not all our wanking that follows later. So, as long as we are indifferent to the privilege of voting, those we elect will yell weird, empty stuff at us on their way to the trash (recycling bin).
As long as we aren’t really interested in elections, we can expect to be given an enormous pile of garbage every other November. Double entendre intended.
I heard a report on NPR that said cereal consumption is on a decline and has been since 1996. The reason was particularly special: we are eating less cereal because it takes too much time. Instead we opt for alternatives like fast-food breakfast sandwiches or Go-Gurt® (for when you’re on the go with yogurt, Go-Gurt®!). Here is a quote from the report I found regrettably true:
This exhausting ritual — pouring cereal into the bowl, pouring milk into the bowl, eating it — takes too much time.
The report goes on to say that since cereal requires using a bowl and a spoon that you have to clean, it has become too much work. In other words: cereal is too time consuming and we don’t have that time to consume it. I would guess that eating cereal, including the dish washing, is a five minute task so this means we don’t have those five minutes anymore. Why not? Where did those five minutes go?
I am guilty of this. I admit now in front of the world wide web that for years I ate my cereal while driving to work since I did not “have the time” to eat at home. Yes, I ate cereal while driving a vehicle…on a freeway. Don’t worry, I drove with my knee so I could eat my cereal while gazing out the window at the Pacific Ocean. It was a win-win, minus the whole danger thing.
I have been thinking about being busy for a while. No matter what I’m doing, I’m busy and have been for years. We all have been. The default answer to the question: “How are you?” is always: “Well, I’ve been busy…” That’s what we all say. Listen for it and you’ll hear it everywhere, you’ll hear it coming from you. The conversation will go from there, both parties secretly comparing levels of busy.
We are all always busy, but the question I ask is: why are we so busy? Why is that our preferred mode? Why do we work so hard to keep it that way? Why do we think running from place to place without time to eat cereal means that we’ve made it?
In U.S. culture, being busy is something to be proud of, a symbol of success. If you aren’t busy you aren’t accomplishing. So we rush through our lives and abbreviate everything, even our experiences, into soundbites. We don’t linger anymore, we don’t savor. Our lives become as peripheral as a status post, outlines of real experience. But we can point to it, check it off of a list, and therefore we think it counts.
I watched a TED Talk by Carl Honoré discussing the glorification of busy and he struck a chord by saying:
Slow is a dirty word. It’s a word for lazy, slacker, for being somebody who gives up.
He’s right. If someone, when asked “how are you?”, actually said they hadn’t been up to much, had free time, and sat on grassy knolls a lot, that wouldn’t go over well. That person would be seen as wasting their time and ultimately their life. Multi-tasking, resume building, a full calendar; that makes a well-lived life.
Honoré thinks our obsession with busy lies in how our culture defines time as “a finite resource…always draining away, you either use it or lose it.” If we have that outlook on time, it makes sense that we race against something that is disappearing on us. Every minute is one and done, so we cram in as much as we can and call it carpe diem.
I argue we stop carpe-ing that diem, at least in the way we carpe today. I argue we do things that can’t be summed up because the entirety of sitting on a grassy knoll can’t be a soundbite. Unless you manage to phrase it how they did in this hilarious/super deep moment from the movie, I ♥ Huckabees:
Doing nothing can mean doing everything. How very New Age of me.
I think if we daydream, if we do nothing, if we do whatever makes our minds quiet, then we can really live our lives. In a study on the resting brain, neuroscientists found “when we are resting, the brain is anything but idle and…downtime is essential to mental processes that affirm our identities, develop our understanding of human behavior and instill a code of ethics.” Take that to your boss when you request a vacation.
Obviously there is a line between being slow and being lazy, but I’m not talking about lazy. I’m talking about the opposite of lazy. I think wasting time can be described as going through your day without being fully aware of what is happening around and in you. Your time is wasted by focusing only on to-do lists and juggling acts, forgetting that it’s a beautiful day and it’s beautiful you’re even alive. The fact is if we don’t have time for something, it means we value other things more than it. I think about that in my life, the things I choose to not do and what I replace them with. I wonder if the tradeoff is worth it…
I’m thinking about giving up being busy. I could find a different answer to the question: “How are you?” I want to describe my life with more detail. I also want to live with more detail. I want to highlight things other than how busy I am because that doesn’t describe me. I’m going to sit on a grassy knoll, eat a bowl of cereal, and tell you all about it.
Being busy doesn’t necessarily mean I’ve carpe-d my diem. Something as simple as having time for cereal can carpe much better.
I am not good with saran wrap. I know I’m supposed to capitalize saran wrap, but I do not care to give it the respect of a proper noun. There is nothing proper about it. I also know that I should call it by the generic phrase “plastic wrap”, but I just can’t. It is saran wrap to me and saran wrap sucks. I can’t control it, I don’t understand it, and I don’t trust it. How can I control something I can’t see?! Nope, saran wrap is no good.
Cutting it is a challenge for me. One section always refuses to sever and instead stretches, resulting in an irritating salt water taffy scenario. I know about applying pressure while cutting. I know about the nifty side tab thing that is supposed to facilitate in the roll out. I know all the tricks, and yet cutting saran wrap continues to suck for me.
When I do manage to cut a piece, the situation unravels from there. The saran wrap will fold in on itself, most likely as a means of self-defense, making it impossible to recreate a flat and useful structure. Or worse, the saran wrap starts to attack. It wraps itself around my hand like a boa constrictor, cutting off air and rendering my fingers inoperable. I end up balling up my failure in a tantrum and starting over.
A few months ago, I started taking pictures of my ongoing war and here is a sampling of my strife:
I may win the battle, but saran wrap always wins the war.
I write about the big things, the little things, and all the big things in the little things. I may be going through a midlife crisis, but it's cool because it's bringing out my weird stuff!